Long Thompson: Revisit contracts

INDIANAPOLIS — Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jill Long Thompson promises a review of every state privatization contract her Republican opponent, Gov. Mitch Daniels, has signed with private businesses during his term in office.

While Long Thompson contends the Major Moves lease of the northern Indiana toll road was a bad deal for taxpayers and would lead to "pure profit" for a foreign consortium, she acknowledged that renegotiating the lease probably would not be an option for her.

An Australian-Spanish consortium paid the state $3.8 billion in 2006 for the rights to lease the toll road for 75 years, and the state is using that money to fund 10 years' worth of highway construction, including the Interstate 69 extension through Southwestern Indiana.

Long Thompson said under her review, funding for the I-69 project would not be jeopardized.

If elected governor, Long Thompson said she would assign her running mate, Dennie Oxley II, to chair a bipartisan panel that would review all state government privatization contracts.

Long Thompson acknowledged, however, that once the state is locked into a contract with a vendor and the deal is sealed, renegotiating it is not a realistic option.

"What I am saying is, if you found another deal that was better, you would 'buy out' that contract," Long Thompson said Wednesday.

"I am putting everything on the table. ... There may be some options that I haven't thought of or Dennie (Oxley) hasn't thought of," she said.

Besides the toll road lease, Long Thompson cited other Daniels administration privatization deals that Oxley would scrutinize, including the $1.16 billion contract with an IBM-led team to handle welfare eligibility screening.

The welfare modernization has been harshly criticized by lawmakers and advocates for the poor and elderly.

"How far do they want to go back?" Savage asked. "How serious are they about this, or is it just election-year rhetoric?"

Savage said Daniels has been able to provide some government services at less cost to taxpayers by contracting out work.

But he noted other instances — such as creating 800new child services caseworker positions — where the gover-nor hired new public employees.

The Cintra-Macquarie consortium paid $3.8 billion up front to operate the toll road for 75 years.

Out of that total, the state has allocated $700 million, of the approximately $2 billion overall project, to build Interstate 69 between Evansville and the Crane warfare center under a Daniels funding program called Major Moves.

Construction on the first segment of I-69 began last month.

Steve Schaefer, executive director of Hoosier Voices for I-69, which lobbied for the funding program, found Long Thompson's proposal puzzling.

"Certainly, we don't want anything to happen to that money allocated to transportation projects across the state. We've come a long way to have that initial construction (of I-69) down here," Schaefer said.

"If (Long Thompson and Oxley) have no intention of exiting the agreement, if they are simply taking shots at it for political reasons, that's not what (supporters of the I-69 project) want to hear down here, for sure," he said.